Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee Orders State Workers To Stay Off Talk Radio

Chafee will continue to talk to reporters from local stations and the nonprofit local NPR affiliate, Michael Trainor, a spokesperson for the governor, told the newspaper. Trainor explained that the governor wants to avoid “ratings-driven, for-profit programming.”

“We don’t think it is appropriate to use taxpayer resources” to pay state employees to appear on for-profit shows, he said.

Bill George, the program director for Providence talk radio station WHJJ pointed out to the Journal that “most media outlets, whether news or opinion, are profit-making entities.”

The governor’s office issued a clarification saying the policy will not apply in “emergency situations,” like impending snow storms, ABC News reports.

Chafee is missing an opportunity here to use the medium to his own, and to his state’s advantage, as the intimacy of the medium is tailor-made for communicating with citizens who don’t confine their tastes to non-profit media.